


a figure in that light, half-blotted by darkness

by LightDescending



Series: two women together is a work [3]
Category: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Genre: Academic Presentation, Essays, Experimental Style, F/F, Future Fic, Historical, Reconstruction of a Narrative, Spider-Man 2099 - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-31 04:06:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20108887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LightDescending/pseuds/LightDescending
Summary: Submitted for PresentationClassroom Holographic Recording/Projecting Entity Model: “Nila”Guest lecture for Graduate Level class Sociology of Heroics: Theory and Review of Notoriety (SOC-TRN700)Theme: Extant Documentation of Villain Liaisons with Hero-Adjacent CiviliansNueva York, NYNOTE: FINAL DRAFT  - Please add any final copy-edits prior to publication and submit no later than August 18th, 2099 at 11:59 pm, author has several other academic assignments due and cannot make revisions after this deadline. Please don’t submit it at 12:03 am on the 19th, either, I’m serious. Nila still bugs out sometimes because the classroom they give the SOC students is really shitty, so we need to give at least a 24 hour buffer between final submission to the uplink and the actual presentation, or else the audio could be completely f***** up and none of us will notice. Point of order, a good test will be whether “Ock” is pronounced as in “Clock” or if Nila reverts to “Oak” or “Ook” – please ensure this isn’t the case or it’ll be really embarrassing for all of us.(Experimental flash-fiction; meta-on-main)





	a figure in that light, half-blotted by darkness

**Submitted for Presentation**

Classroom Holographic Recording/Projecting Entity Model: “Nila”

Graduate Level class Sociology of Heroics: Theory and Review of Notoriety  
(SOC-TRN700)

**Theme:** Extant Documentation of Villain Liaisons with Hero-Adjacent Civilians

Nueva York, NY

**NOTE:** FINAL DRAFT - Please add any final copy-edits prior to publication and submit no later than **August 18th, 2099 at 11:59 pm**, author has several other academic assignments due and cannot make revisions after this deadline. Please don’t submit it at 12:03 am on the 19th, either, I’m serious. Nila still bugs out sometimes because the classroom they give the SOC students is really shitty, so we need to give at least a 24 hour buffer between final submission to the uplink and the actual presentation, or else the audio could be completely fucked up and none of us will notice. Point of order, a good test will be whether “Ock” is pronounced as in “Clock” or if Nila reverts to “Oak” or “Ook” – please ensure this isn’t the case or it’ll be really embarrassing for all of us.

Code for synching the audio to the visual projections is going to be Alche-M4X-042-201. Yes, _that _Alchemax aka the historical one was the direct inspiration for the modern day one but the corporations are two completely separate entities. The Alchemax of the Heroic Age was dissolved in early 2019 after the events we cover in this presentation. Be prepared for some of the more enterprising students to ask about that. No speculation allowed, though.

Also I know my holographic code is redundant, and yes, I _am _aware that other Actions exist beyond the zoom-to; I didn’t have much notice, unfortunately, or the presentation would be a lot more interesting. Not your fault, usually this gets presented in a much different setting and for a much different audience. I’m lucky I had access to the interactive visualization files from the last time I gave this lecture. Thanks for all your help setting this up.

* * *

Of the principle individuals of the Heroic Era, much has been written. Surviving records which can be parsed and scraped by modern devices come in a variety of formats, both analogue and digital, and thus form a rich dataset for much of the historical analysis completed so far. As these documents, records, and files were generated less than a century ago, we are able to reconstruct more or less accurate chronicles of multiple critical figures and their dealings with one another.

> [HOLOGRAPHICNOTE]
> 
> {code run: CONTINUOUS: display-citations=ALL, SIZE:subfont, ALIGN=lower-right.//}
> 
> {code run: DISPLAY FULL: Body01-10, SEQUENCE: numeric, SIZING: 2xscale;scanrate100xper1.0second, RENDER: color, DURATION: 4.6%TotalAudioRuntime, LASTIMAGE: Hold}
> 
> \---->> REFERENCE.HOLOGRAPHIC//DISPLAY: {01:NormanOsbourne;02:WilsonFisk;03:PeterBParker001;04:SpiderNoir;05:PeniParkerSP||DR;06:SpiderHam;06:GwenStacy;07:MaryJaneParker;08:PeterParkerThisUniverse;09: MilesMorales;10a:AaronDavis;10b:Prowler;11:JeffersonDavis;12:RioMorales;13:OliviaOctavius.//}
> 
> [/ENDNOTE]

For instance, we have extensive evidence of the events which transpired in Nueva York, then still called New York, in late November 2018, which gave rise to the era in which Miles Morales took on the mantle of the Spider-Man after Peter Parker’s death. The exploits of the figures you see here are well-accounted for in the historical record, even for those individuals whose stay in this universe was brief.

Why do we occupy ourselves with their lives? Notoriety as it has been defined through your coursework so far is undoubtedly a key element of why we give weight to the comings and goings of some, but not all, heroes and villains.

This tendency is why, although none of the Spiders from other points in the multiverse stayed in New York for long – 3 days the shortest, one and a half weeks the longest – we have countless eye-witness accounts of their exploits, kept tabs on them through the interdimensional network, and were thus able to trace with some certainty their exploits.

It is also why a high density of fanworks and derivative fiction exists from this same period, as well as non-fiction holdings from all publication levels, popular through peer-reviewed; Miles Morales captured the imagination of countless Americans, and others globally, and rightfully so. His story was a call to action to civilians and other heroes alike, and an entirely new field of study was dedicated in the 2030’s to examine the impacts of the Heroic Age on subsequent socio-political events, with Miles’ ascension often cited as a turning point in American culture.

Some of these figures, such as Miles Morales’ immediate family members, were drawn into the public spotlight after his time as Spider-Man simply because they had close ties to him and were critical supports throughout his career, especially once he made his alter-ego known to them. However, you may wonder why Dr. Olivia Octavius is the individual who I have chosen to end this introductory section on; why she remains projected before you.

Simply put, other scholars have and continue to archive, analyze, consolidate, synthesize, and present on topics related to Miles Morales’s life, and I am satisfied that my own scholarly abilities would not contribute as much richness or depth to the discussion. I would be able to make recommendations on literature considered the most influential; for instance, Inez Gonzales’ work on the significance Miles had and continues to have for the Afro-Latino community and to Nuyoricans, or Aja Feliciano and Manuel Piñero’s analysis of the complex and sometimes contentious relationship that Miles Morales had with the PDNY of the early 2010’s and throughout the rest of his career.

My interest is on the nature of the relationship that existed between Dr. Olivia Octavius, who we now understand to have taken on the villain moniker “Doc Ock”, and May Parker.

The remainder of this presentation will highlight the following: that the exact nature of their relationship has been lost, for reasons that will be discussed; that precise details about their relationship have been interpreted multiple ways; and that certain facts nonetheless remain known. If you keep nothing else in mind for the duration of this lecture, it ought to be this: that Miles Morales’s story, and the stories of all others in his sphere, including those individuals thought to be periphery, draw attention to ongoing systemic inequities; and that there is always worth in seeking out and tending to the stories of those who would otherwise be overlooked. 

> [HOLOGRAPHICNOTE]
> 
> {code run: DISPLAY FULL: AppendBody14, SIZING: 2xscale;scanrate100xper1.0second, RENDER: color, DURATION: TotalAudioRuntime}
> 
> \---->> REFERENCE.HOLOGRAPHIC//DISPLAY: {14:MayParker.//}
> 
> [/ENDNOTE]

For numerous reasons still being speculated upon, May Parker managed to evade scholarly and other attention for the remainder of her life, even after it became apparent that she had known about Peter Parker’s identity and in fact facilitated the development of his technological gear and various Spider-Man suits.

We got our first clues as a research community as to what had transpired when corrupted data was closely examined by a joint team of scholars from interdisciplinary backgrounds, well into 2076. This was the year that public funding was secured from the Nuevo York Library and Archives and the Nuevo York Heroic Age Museum partnership to undertake such a project, which had been proposed and passed over for a decade or so prior by other investors. Initially, it was assumed that the loss of knowledge on May Parker and Olivia Octavius was coincidental and random, especially after the city-wide destruction wreaked by Venom in 2021.

> [HOLOGRAPHICNOTE]
> 
> {code run: DISPLAY FULL: CorruptData01-20,Olivia-Desktop SIZING: 1.5xscale;scanrate100xper1.0second, RENDER: color;rotate;no-blink;glitch-smoothing-on, DURATION: 5%TotalAudioRuntime}
> 
> \---->> REFERENCE.HOLOGRAPHIC//DISPLAY: {CorruptData01;repeat-append-numerical-code;Olivia-Desktop.//}
> 
> [/ENDNOTE]

However, it was later discovered that the dearth of reliable and accurate information was due to two primary reasons: first, the corruption of most digital files that could be retrieved from the Parker residence and the presence of elaborate codes which had been set to automatically scrub online spaces of any information which could be used to identify and locate May; and second, the impossibly convoluted and disorganized file structure on Olivia Octavius’s numerous hard-drives and backup servers, or at least the ones that could be retrieved from Alchemax headquarters after Wilson Fisk’s arrest and trial.

The sheer volume of her data rendered sorting and categorizing it into meaningful structures for content analysis a nearly impossible task, even with AI assistance. It is assumed the computers retrieved from Alchemax represent 0.01% of all the storage space Olivia Octavius’s files would have required for containment, and what _has _been retrieved suggests that she had little to no boundaries between her personal and professional life.

> [HOLOGRAPHICNOTE]
> 
> {code run: DISPLAY FULL: Olivia-Desktop SIZING: 1.5xscale;scanrate100xper1.0second, RENDER: color;rotate;no-blink;glitch-smoothing-on, DURATION: Constant, ACTION: zoom-to-presets01-09,First:”best sandwiches”, Last:”files_for_evil”}
> 
> \---->> REFERENCE.HOLOGRAPHIC//DISPLAY: { Olivia-Desktop.//}
> 
> [/ENDNOTE]

An illustrative sample of folder names from her work desktop includes the headings “best sandwiches”, “letters for students”, “dinner_party”, “Cheese club”, “Pics from Toronto trip”, “new hair”, “no no no”, “fantasy league”, and perhaps most tongue-in-cheek, “files_for_evil”. Historians and LAINS students will recognize what a boon and a burden such immense collections represent. 

> [HOLOGRAPHICNOTE]
> 
> {code run: DISPLAY FULL=Return-to-Previous: 13:OliviaOctavius;Append: 14:MayParker.//}
> 
> \---->> REFERENCE.HOLOGRAPHIC//DISPLAY: {13:OliviaOctavius;Append: 14:MayParker.//}
> 
> [/ENDNOTE]

Methodological challenges related to the above two factors had thwarted most researchers, who preferred to work with large-scale datasets acquired on the other villains post-humously (as with the tragic case of Aaron Davis, or the disappearance of Norman Osbourne), post-arrest (as with Wilson Fisk), or from the Heroes and their families (as from the de-classified archives of S.H.I.E.L.D). These datasets were far more accessible, had reliable and consistent metadata often already attached, and included personal effects as primary sources in archival boxes coupled with appropriate labels, contextual notes, and finding aids. Moreover, because these items were almost always stored in S.H.I.E.L.D secure facilities, which are air-tight and temperature controlled, the records were in superb condition and could remain so over time.

> [HOLOGRAPHICNOTE]
> 
> {code run: DISPLAY FULL=ResearchTeam SIZING: 1.5xscale;scanrate100xper1.0second, RENDER: color;static DURATION: Constant, ACTION: zoom-to-presets01-11,First:”LAINS-Annie”, Last:”HAS-Ganke-the-2nd”}.//}
> 
> \---->> REFERENCE.HOLOGRAPHIC//DISPLAY: {13:OliviaOctavius;Append: 14:MayParker.//}
> 
> [/ENDNOTE]

The interdisciplinary team assigned to tackling the files of Olivia Octavius and May Parker included 3 students of Library, Archival, Information, and Network Science, or LAINS; 1 Semantics and Linguistics student; a Graduate student with extensive knowledge of Computer Science and Data Reconstruction; a Women and Gender Studies PhD candidate; three research assistants of various backgrounds in the Social Sciences, whose majors had been undeclared at the time; and two of the first Masters students of the new Faculty of Heroic Age Studies, both of whom would graduate with Honors from the program on completing their research.

They were given sufficient funding for two semesters’ worth of work; several boxes of May Parker’s personal effects from the Parker Museum in Queens, the restored site of the house that was destroyed in November 2018; access to the haphazardly kept remnants of Olivia Octavius’s hard-drives; a few scattered data drives of uncertain origin; and a few sundry other objects. What they found was as follows, although these notes are abbreviated and focus on the most salient findings:

> [HOLOGRAPHICNOTE]
> 
> {code run: DISPLAY FULL: MayParkerEffects;Corrupt-Data-Corpus SIZING: 1.5xscale;scanrate100xper1.0second, RENDER: color;rotate;no-blink;glitch-smoothing-on, DURATION: TotalAudioRuntime, ACTION: zoom-to-presets01-25, first “web-cuff”, last “DataCorruptionNetworkVisualizationMap-Interactive”}
> 
> \---->> REFERENCE.HOLOGRAPHIC//DISPLAY: {MayParkerEffects;CorruptDataCorpus.//}
> 
> [/ENDNOTE]

In May Parker’s personal effects, an item of note was a prototype of the web-slinger cuffs that Miles favoured into the early 2020’s, lending credence to existing knowledge that she mentored him relatively closely and provided material support. There were several books of poetry and non-fiction from various disciplines with added annotations by May, some of which contained personal inscriptions written by Olivia Octavius between the years of 1997 and 2011. During the time these books were sent, Olivia was living and working in California and developing her reputation as one of the country’s leading physicists, a science communicator for youth, and an eccentric professor. There were also a number of artifacts related to Ben and Peter Parker, along with a few personal journals; however, May Parker also appears to have encoded some journal entries as textile inserts to the otherwise normal paper pages, using algorithms designed by herself, and as of yet there is no success decrypting their contents.

The corrupted data corpuses were more telling, once the students realized that the gaps in data were too precise and specific. For instance, Olivia Octavius was known to have correspondence with May Parker – however, May’s journal mentions of Olivia linked consistently to gaps in the data on Olivia’s hard-drives, and there were likewise gaps in May Parker’s digital traces whenever she mentioned having spent time with Olivia during the early- to mid-2010’s. That time period falls directly prior to Olivia’s contract work with the Fisk Family Foundation that injected her research facility with new revenue and led to the development of the super-collider which nearly collapsed this universe due to Fisk’s insistence on booting the collider before it was fully ready to deploy. 

When the research team realized that these gaps existed and were placed there, they were able to hypothesize that similar gaps would exist all throughout the corpus – once proven, this showed that Dr. Olivia Octavius likely created the corruption sequences herself, and set them upon any files that could provide a plausible tie between herself and May Parker. The exact reasons for this are unknown, but it is speculated that it had something to do with Wilson Fisk.

> [HOLOGRAPHICNOTE]
> 
> {code run: DISPLAY FULL:SuperColliderSchematics+journal-superimposition SIZING: 1.5xscale;scanrate100xper1.0second, RENDER: color;rotate;no-blink;glitch-smoothing-on, DURATION: TotalAudioRuntime}
> 
> \---->> REFERENCE.HOLOGRAPHIC//DISPLAY: { SuperColliderSchematics+journal-superimposition.//}
> 
> [/ENDNOTE]

The rationale behind this assumption is that new dummy files start to appear in 2016 and later, once Olivia started to log files related to the super-collider project; it was at this point that Fisk had approached Olivia, who then still operated as Doc Ock, about the plan to attempt recovering alternate and still-living versions of his family members from separate points in the multiverse. The dummy files attempt to create alibis for May Parker’s whereabouts, although May’s journal entries indicate that there was some sort of lapse in the contact she had with Olivia following tensions between them. Regardless of the conflict that May logged having occurred, Olivia seems to have attempted a sort of digital buffer creation, and based on what we know of their relationship in 2019 and onwards, it seems this was initially created to protect May from Fisk. Wilson Fisk was known for being particularly brutal, callously murderous, and for going after the loved ones of close associates who displeased, challenged, or threatened him. 

Thanks to this breakthrough, the entire research team was able to create a proposal that extended funding well beyond the original deadline, secured money for a few additional research assistants, justified the purchase of some software to help them parse the large dataset, and paid for server space on which they could backup all of their findings and prevent further corruption over time. The research project has since been funded on and off for the last 23 years, if anyone was wondering; it’s been dependent on renewed student interest in picking up where the last team left off.

If you would like, at the end of this presentation you are welcome to come and interact with the network map currently being displayed, which shows a chronological timeline of some of the corrupted data, which has been mapped onto entries in May’s journals or annotations left in the margins of her poetry books.

As has been established, there is extreme difficulty reconstructing with accuracy exactly what occurred between May and Olivia. There are a few theories as to how their relationship might have panned out, given that we know the two of them had been romantically involved.

> [HOLOGRAPHICNOTE]
> 
> {code run: DISPLAY FULL:Relationship-LineGraph-IntersectingLines SIZING: 1.5xscale;scanrate100xper1.0second, RENDER: color;rotate;no-blink;glitch-smoothing-on, DURATION: TotalAudioRuntime, ACTION: show-intersections;MatchTo:numeric-assignment;Order:as-given, “(1)” to “(4)”;Glow:intensify-during-status:”romantic”}
> 
> \---->> REFERENCE.HOLOGRAPHIC//DISPLAY: { Relationship-LineGraph-IntersectingLines.//}
> 
> [/ENDNOTE]

It should be noted that we are fully aware, given old student registration record, that Olivia and May first met when they were graduate students in similar programs, although May was there as a mature student. Afterwards, May Parker remained in New York due to her adoption in 1992 of an infant Peter Parker, while Olivia moved away on a fellowship. As such, the following scenarios deal with their relationship after Olivia returned to New York as head scientist of Alchemax in 2010. At this point, Peter Parker was an undergraduate student seeking a Bachelor’s of Chemical Engineering, and secured work as a part-time intern in Olivia’s lab. We know that he had been operating as Spider-Man for 2 years by that point as well, and that he finished his stint in the lab upon his convocation in 2014. The following theories encapsulate various interpretations of the primary materials, inclusive of the aforementioned gaps in knowledge:

> \---->> REFERENCE.HOLOGRAPHIC//DISPLAY: { Relationship-LineGraph-IntersectingLines(1).//}

(1) Olivia Octavius and May Parker had dated while they were students together; however, May’s engagement and marriage to Ben Parker caused a rupture in their relationship. They nevertheless remained close friends, and resumed a closer relationship after Olivia Octavius resolved the incompatibilities created between them as a result of her alter-ego as Doc Ock. May Parker was never aware that Olivia was Doc Ock, as suggested by her unencrypted journal entries.

> \---->> REFERENCE.HOLOGRAPHIC//DISPLAY: { Relationship-LineGraph-IntersectingLines(2).//}

(2) Olivia Octavius and May Parker did not date while they were students, as May was married to Ben by the time she had any classes overlapping with Olivia and the two were not previously aware of each other’s presence in the same program, which at the time had over 500 students registered. However, they maintained a close friendship through the 1990’s and early 2000’s. This would explain May’s presence with Olivia at the tech summit where she presented an earlier prototype of what would become her Doc Ock suit, although the latter was heavily modified and therefore almost unrecognizable; it would also explain why Olivia was present at Peter and MJ’s wedding.

They may have formally began seeing each other romantically sometime in 2013-2014; May’s journals could be read to support this theory, although they never clarified the nature of their liaisons, hence my refraining from calling theirs a “dating” relationship. Given that May was supporting Peter more and more in his work as Spider-Man, she might have been worried about blowing his cover to an intimate partner. May was never aware that Olivia was Doc Ock, but other tensions in their relationship related to Olivia’s work schedule and May’s involvement with Spider-Man meant they stopped speaking sometime in 2016 or 2017, and only resumed a relationship once Olivia resolved the issues created by her alter-ego.

> \---->> REFERENCE.HOLOGRAPHIC//DISPLAY: { Relationship-LineGraph-IntersectingLines(3).//}

(3) Olivia Octavius and May Parker did not date while they were students, as May was married to Ben, but they maintained a close friendship in the 1990’s and early 2000’s and began a romantic relationship after Olivia’s return to New York in 2010 which continued without conflict for a few years. However, once Olivia Octavius re-appropriated the suit – and it should be noted we still don’t know how she did so, nor why her funders didn’t attempt litigation or more underhanded methods of retrieving their asset – she began to experiment with vigilante operations to acquire data, dangerous pieces of technology including nuclear assets, and increasingly elaborate heists.

It was during this period, from 2015 onward, that Doc Ock began making regular appearances in the news; and, it was in Spring 2016 that Doc Ock had her first fight with Spider-Man. Extrapolating from the timeline we have established for May Parker and Peter, it would make sense that the two stopped speaking sometime in 2016 or 2017 as a direct result of Olivia’s negative encounters with Spider-Man, and due to May’s secrets about her support for him and role in his life as the developer of his tech. They resumed their relationship after Olivia resolved the issues created by her alter-ego.

> \---->> REFERENCE.HOLOGRAPHIC//DISPLAY: { Relationship-LineGraph-IntersectingLines(4)+EFFECT:go-dark.//}

(4) Olivia Octavius and May Parker did not date, but maintained a deep and abiding friendship, if one fraught with conflict, throughout their time in New York in the 2010’s and onward, including through the point that Olivia Octavius gave up her life as a supervillain and was rehabilitated to society. May Parker was aware of and disapproved of Liv’s actions as Doc Ock, but due to her precarious position in Peter Parker aka Spider-Man’s life, was unable to directly address these issues.

This final theory is not widely supported, as it overlooks the fact that May Parker would have had multiple opportunities to turn Olivia in to law enforcement and never did. This theory was mainly proposed by certain social groups who protested the possibility of any superhero or hero-adjacent family member from having LGBTQ+ leanings, as they were known; it should be recalled that civil rights at the time had only just been extended to grant universal gay marriage as of 2015, and so social backlash still existed against queer persons in society.

As queer people, both Olivia and May would have been subject to prejudice; May Parker, as the adoptive mother-figure of Peter Parker, was particularly important symbolically to some of the social groups who later reacted so poorly to any assertions that May was bisexual, or could have had a relationship with another woman. Reactionary bigotry also existed towards Olivia, whose status as a supervillain was used by certain groups to reinforce notions that queerness was deviant.

Which brings us to the final section of this lecture before our conclusion: the facts as we know them, and as can be stated with any amount of certainty and clarity.

> [HOLOGRAPHICNOTE]
> 
> {code run: DISPLAY FULL:DoctorOctopusAnimations SIZING: 1.5xscale;scanrate100xper1.0second, RENDER: color;rotate;no-blink;glitch-smoothing-on, DURATION: TotalAudioRuntime}
> 
> \---->> REFERENCE.HOLOGRAPHIC//DISPLAY: {DoctorOctopusAnimations.//}
> 
> [/ENDNOTE]

Olivia Octavius is a notorious character in the Heroic Age, not least because for a time she was known as the theatrical, outwardly sadistic Doctor Octopus, or Doc Ock for short. Her callousness and gleeful disregard for safety protocols and law meant that she was a formidable foe for Spider-Man, and her proclivity for stealing extremely dangerous technology meant that she remained a high priority on S.H.I.E.L.D’s list of most dangerous villains threatening New York. Eye-witness accounts indicate that Doc Ock _enjoyed_ what she was doing very much; what we know of Doctor Octopus in other universes suggest that this character trait remains more or less constant, regardless of the iteration being encountered.

However, some Doc Ock’s have been clinically diagnosed in their universes with Machiavellianism, psychopathy, or sadism; Olivia Octavius never received a formal diagnosis with any of these. Moreover, she was more inclined towards collateral damage and causing harm through inaction or as a consequence of her scientific endeavours; despite the fact that her fighting style was both elaborate and, to use a term from 2018 frequently associated with her on social media, ‘extra’, Olivia herself was not recorded causing the direct or intentional deaths of civilians by her own hand. See the above note regarding collateral damage, which she was willing to accept.

Rather, Olivia admitted in her 2019 interviews with S.H.I.E.L.D – the somewhat redacted transcripts of which the research team was granted access to – that she preferred to try and deflect attention by ‘scaring off’ the heroes, in particular Spider-Man, or by threatening people with carefully calculated near-misses so that she would be taken seriously. This held true with respect to her modus operandi when faced with fellow villainous peers; she preferred to threaten others, demand respect from them, and manipulate their desires in order to achieve her own goals while deflecting attention away from what she didn’t want them to see. Fisk’s own interviews indicate that he was unaware that Olivia ever had any ulterior motives in his dealings with her as head scientist, and was moreover unaware of just how much smarter than him she was. The only time that Olivia ever became remotely violent or angry during her interviews was when her interviewers insinuated that she had been willing to kill Miles Morales or Gwen Stacy. Note that the following clip, which we were allowed to obtain, is coarse in language and extremely loud, although we have limited the decibel level to a non-damaging range.

> [HOLOGRAPHICNOTE]
> 
> {code run: DISPLAY FULL:”I don’t kill kids, you sick fucks, I’m not a fucking monster” SIZING: 1.0xscale, RENDER: color, DURATION: clip-length, ACTION:80%-volume,max-decibels:80}
> 
> \---->> REFERENCE.HOLOGRAPHIC//DISPLAY: {“I don’t kill kids, you sick fucks, I’m not a fucking monster”.//}
> 
> [/ENDNOTE]

Her insistence that her actions with respect to Miles Morales during his initiation as Spider-Man under the tutelage of Peter B. Parker were intended as a cautionary lesson has been met with intense skepticism. Likewise, several pieces of early and emergent social media analysis show that there was a consensus that her single-minded pursuit of ‘proving’ the multiverse theory was ill-advised, and that she deserved to be held accountable for her role in the deployment of a super-collider that she was aware was unstable and unready. However, an additional fact is this: after a probationary period and rigorous monitoring, Olivia Octavius was eventually allowed to return to an instructional post, to resume some limited scientific studies in conjunction with May Parker, and to act as a mentor to Miles Morales while he completed his studies at the Visions Academy.

> [HOLOGRAPHICNOTE]
> 
> {code run: DISPLAY FULL:Snapshots:2025-01—2025-30, SIZING: 1.5xscale;scanrate100xper1.0second, RENDER: color, DURATION: 5-seconds, ACTION: fade-transition}
> 
> \---->> REFERENCE.HOLOGRAPHIC//DISPLAY: {Snapshots:2025-01—2025-30(pullfrom:LivMayfiles01-35, order=chronological).//}
> 
> [/ENDNOTE]

A final fact: May Parker and Olivia Octavius lived together until May Parker’s death in 2045, and Olivia Octavius passed away eleven years later after founding and overseeing the early years of the May Parker STEAM Foundation. This Foundation remains a combined Science and Humanities program for young women and LGBTQ+ students from underrepresented social groups, especially those who displayed an interest in studying interdimensional travel with a focus on ethics. The snapshots that you see here were captured during those years that they lived together.

I would like to leave you with a final question: given that May Parker is such a central figure in the life of Peter Parker, and now, in this universe, Miles Morales… why do we know so little about her now?

> [HOLOGRAPHICNOTE]
> 
> {code run: DISPLAY FULL: Body14, SIZING: 2xscale;scanrate100xper1.0second, RENDER: color, DURATION: TotalAudioRuntime, ACTION: Hold;slow-rotate}
> 
> \---->> REFERENCE.HOLOGRAPHIC//DISPLAY: {14MayParker.//}
> 
> [/ENDNOTE]

She is typically relegated to being understood through the lens of a handful of archetypes at any given time. Although we are starting to pay more attention to, and piece together, the disparate extant elements which document her life, her doings, her actions, we still don’t know or understand much about what she thought about.

Her life was characterized by loss: of her in-laws, of her husband, Ben, and finally even of Peter; we know very little about how she came to terms with those losses, what she thought or felt about them, or where she drew strength and comfort from. She was integrally connected within her community and very important to her neighbours and friends – her kindness and fierce compassion are well-documented in every iteration of her universe that we are aware of – but we have only guesses as to why that would be the case. Indeed, for much of her life she was assumed to be civilian herself, until after her death and the discovery of the Spider Lab in which she worked.

The lessons she learned over the course of her life, the stability of her character and values, and the ways that her identity as a Jewish bisexual woman informed her worldview and actions have not been examined in any particular way… in part because she herself was not notorious. We also do not understand much about what May Parker might have desired, nor how she expressed those desires through time. May Parker has escaped scholarly notice, and the difficulty in gathering materials by which her life could be reconstructed can only account for part of these gaps.

While I am clearly displaying a desire to fill some of those gaps in our historical understanding, it would nevertheless be inappropriate to suggest that the very act of uncovering, de-classifying, and interpretation does not constitute its own form of ethical grey-area. While it is worthy to ask who may have been excised or excluded from the public record, it is also _equally_ necessary to consider the ways that agency has been deployed by figures such as those we label heroes or villains to safeguard and conceal the details of their lives, and what vested interests they may have in privacy.

What public interest does it serve to know everything about May Parker’s life? About Olivia Octavius’s? About Miles Morales? Whom is it important to that we know these details? In what ways are these figures presented, and interpreted, and viewed? How do our understandings of their lives shape the narratives we construct about what it means to be a hero, or a villain, or an ordinary person with the capacity to be both? These are all crucial questions.

Although this lecture is only a short part of your overall course, I encourage you to continue thinking and reflecting on these issues, regardless of which heroes, anti-heroes, villains, or adjacent civilians your own studies focus on.

Thank you for your time. I am remotely keying in and able to take questions.

> [HOLOGRAPHICNOTE]
> 
> {code run: CONTINUOUS: display-reference-list=ALL.//}
> 
> [/ENDNOTE]

* * *

**FINAL NOTES:** Do we know if the classroom is equipped for small group-work stations? I think there might be chaos if we try to project the interactive materials and displays and have everyone working on them at once. It'd be much better if we can split the class into small pods and rotate them around between the projections of the materials, allowing them time to explore certain things and then return to them for unstructured time in the last 20 minutes or so of the lesson.

The most popular one is usually the corrupted data linked up to May's journal entries, but it's different from class to class, and new artifacts have been released from the collections in the interim. Please confirm how long I'll have for the Q&A as well, so that I can allot adequate time and cut myself off from group questions early if needed to allow for the exploratory time. Thanks again!

**Author's Note:**

> This was written in approximately 3.5 hours and has minimal edits, which is true to form for some of the academic presentations I've given before!
> 
> The title of this fic is from XXI in Twenty-One Love Poems by Adrienne Rich, 1974-76, which can be found in the collection The Dream of a Common Language, because I have a theme with this series and I'm sticking to it.
> 
> I've always been fascinated by alternative format fiction presented in a variety of styles; I love fictional academic writing, journalism, and letter-writing, so I wanted to play around with that for a while. I also wanted to play around with my Ideal Situation Ending for this particular pairing, in the specific timeline I've created for them. All names are fictitious, obviously. 
> 
> The inspiration for this was partially reading through some of Anne Lister's diaries, in particular "I know my own heart: the diaries of Anne Lister 1791-1840" edited by Helena Whitbread and published in 1988. I spend a lot of time in my line of work (and in my personal time) thinking about how we 'know' historical figures, what makes someone noteworthy in the public eye, and how we deal with and navigate those kinds of tensions between privacy and curiosity. This fic isn't a complete argument on that front one way or another, but I wanted to at least explore some of those themes. 
> 
> The holographic code is entirely made up, and I'm assuming the person making this presentation has only a rudimentary grasp of it. The biggest piece of wish-fulfillment in this fic is probably the concept of automatically displayed citations. That's the dream.


End file.
